Leicestershire & Rutland Remember the First World War

Information

Background

The first oral histories collected in Leicestershire & Rutland that included memories of the First World War were recorded from 1983 onwards. Previously, BBC Radio Leicester had recorded interviews with survivors of WW1, and even with a survivor of the Boer War, but these were used as short clips in a series of programmes about the history of the Leicestershire Tigers regiment and the original recordings no longer exist.

In the 1980s the Leicester Oral History Archive compiled a cassette of memories of 'The Great War' and sold it to the public via local libraries and the tourist information office. However, since this was created there have been many more recordings that mention WW1 that have never been used publically. In the summer of 2014 the East Midlands Oral History Archive (EMOHA) and a team of volunteers started the process of listening to almost 300 recordings that include memories from 1914-1918. The team identified a number of themes that were talked about in the recordings and relevant extracts were identified and the process of turning them into sound clips started. This initial work created a solid base that Colin Hyde of EMOHA could use to fully explore the recordings and create edited sound clips that amount to more than 2 hours of material.

Thanks are due to the team of volunteers who met for a week at the Record Office for Leicester, Leicestershire & Rutland in July 2014 to start the project: Mel Rawling-Reeves, John Sutton, Roy Birch, Stephen North, William Ferguson, Dave Bux, Pat Breen, Penny Walker, Thomas Evans, Joe Hartland, Zhining Liu, Max Jin, Matt Astley, Omar Farraj, Samuel Moore, Nick Wilson, Will Salt, Will Trickett.

The Recordings

Each speaker in the audio compilations was recorded in either the 1980s or 1990s as part of one of several oral history projects then running in Leicestershire. Most of these recordings were not about WW1 specifically but covered it as part of general memories of the interviewee's life and times. These memories cover life on the home front in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland. There are more recordings with people who served in the armed forces during WW1 but they are not included in these compilations.

Most of the recordings were created using 1/4" reel to reel tape recorders, usually UHERs, while others were recorded on cassette. These have been digitised and every effort has been made to present the recordings as well as possible, but the sound quality of the recordings is variable.